After facing a humiliating defeat in the recently concluded Assembly elections in the State, Raj Babbar, who already offered to resign taking morale responsibility of defeat, had now decided to felicitate the 7 winning MlAs at the Party office here on Saturday afternoon.
Sources in the Party confirmed that Babbar had also planned to summon all the candidates who contested on Party symbol in this election on Sunday and to discuss with them about the reasons which are responsible for worst ever show of the Party in Uttar Pradesh. However, no communication has been made so far with any of the candidates in this regard.
Party’s state spokesman, Virendra Madan, told reporters here on Friday afternoon that Babbar will be coming to lucknow and will honour all the 7 winning Party candidates here at Party’s state head-quarter on Saturday afternoon. He claimed that other senior party leaders including former Delhi CM Sheila Dixit, who was also made the Party CM face in the elections before the Party went ahead to have alliance with Samajwadi Party, and some other Rajya Sabha members like Pl Puniya, Sanjay Singh, Pramod Tewari, former State president Nirmal Khatri, have been also invited for the function.
Interestingly, Gulam Nabi Azad, all India general secretary of the Party and also incharge here in UP, along with Congress’s poll strategist, Prashant Kishore aka `PK’ will not attend the meeting as a big section of local Congressmen held them responsible for defeat, particularly as the two, along with the Congress MlA’s in last Assembly, were mainly responsible for defeat as they advocated alliance with Samajwadi Party. The majority of leaders felt that it was `Alliance’ which finally proved to be just like committing suicide ever before giving a fight.
Meanwhile, the Party was also planning to hold a meeting of all the assembly election candidates, who have lost the elections, here on Sunday to review the election results. Congress had won 7 seats of the 114 candidates fielded in alliance with the Samajwadi Party in the UP polls. Though only 2 of the total 20 sitting MlAs (8 who won last time already deserted Congress to join other Parties) had won the elections with one being Ajay Kumar lalu from Kushinagar district and Aradhana Mishra from Pratapgarh district. Remaining candidates are new comers including Aditi Singh, from Rae Bareli, who won by the highest margin of around 90,000 votes. The Party is also to elect it’s leader for the legislative Party but the decision will be only taken later on.